IKEA Plans to Offer Extended Paid Leave to All New Parents

The U.S. still lags behind the rest of the world when it comes to paid maternity leave, but several companies are starting to step it up. This includes IKEA, the Swedish brand which, up until now, followed the sort of bare-minimum family leave policy you’d expect from a big-box retailer with a 29 percent turnover rate. But as The Washington Post reports, the business recently announced a major change that affects their U.S. employees: Starting this January, workers in IKEA’s U.S. corporate office and stores will be offered up to four months paid or partially paid family leave whether they're a new mom, dad, or non-birth parent of any gender.

A handful of tech companies have made headlines in recent years for their generous policies that extend paid leave benefits to all parents. But in the retail sector, where employees are often viewed as replaceable, progressive benefits like these are rare. IKEA U.S.’s human resources manager Nabeela Ixtabalan told The Washington Post that the move is being made to retain more workers and eventually lead to less spending on recruiting and training efforts. Even more importantly, she says, the company hopes the change will bring them closer to their goal of fostering a “healthy and safe workforce.”

IKEA’s previous family leave policy didn’t offer much to new parents: short-term disability leave for mothers who had recently given birth and five days of paid leave for all other parents. Under their new rules, biological parents, foster parents, and adoptive parents who’ve worked with the company for at least a year will be eligible to receive six weeks of fully-paid time off followed by six more weeks with 50 percent pay. New parents who’ve been with IKEA for three years will have access to those same benefits for eight weeks at a time.

Up to 16 weeks of time off sounds like a good deal for an hourly worker, but the policy could have unintended consequences. Half of their regular pay isn’t enough for many workers to survive on—especially with a new addition to the family—and employees with the lowest wages may be most likely to skip out on the full benefits. But IKEA says this is something they’ve already considered, and they plan to allow workers to supplement the partial pay window with unused vacation and sick days. If more retailers follow IKEA’s lead, the positive impact could be felt beyond each company’s individual workforce—more comprehensive paid leave policies throughout the U.S. could save America billions each year.

Anyone who has ever had a boss has undoubtedly butted heads with that person and knows that it can make for an awkward vibe in the office. While it would be easy to let your resentment fester and possibly affect your work performance, scientists have a better solution: Get a voodoo doll.

As ScienceAlert reports, a new study published in The Leadership Quarterly found that when employees feel mistreated in the workplace, stabbing pins into a voodoo doll of their boss can be an effective way of managing the situation (and certainly a much better solution than stewing in anger). The study, led by psychologist Dr. Lindie Hanyu Liang, an assistant professor at the Lazaridis School of Business and Economics at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada, found that engaging in "symbolic retaliation" against one's boss after perceived mistreatment eased participants' bitterness.

"We found a simple and harmless symbolic act of retaliation can make people feel like they're getting even and restoring their sense of fairness," Liang toldThe Telegraph.

In one experiment, nearly 200 full-time employees were asked to recall an instance in which they felt mistreated by their boss. Some of the participants were then given one full minute to exact their revenge on a virtual voodoo doll via a range of torture options, including sticking the doll with pins, burning it with a candle, or pinching it with pliers. Then, all of the study's participants completed a fill-in-the-blank word exercise.

Not only did those participants who got the chance to (fake) torture their boss report feeling less angry about the situation, they also did better on the exercise. The authors of the study concluded that harmless retaliation not only benefits individuals, but may also benefit the company as a whole, because employees' sense of justice is important for their well-being and performance on the job.

Liang told The Telegraph that you don't even need a voodoo doll to achieve the desired result. "Theoretically anything that serves as a symbolic act of retaliation, like throwing darts at a picture of your boss, might work," she said.

Post-it Notes are a great way to organize thoughts and write down reminders on paper, but once you move beyond the office, they're not always hardy enough to do the job. You can't get a Post-it to stick on the side of an exterior wall, or somewhere where it's going to get wet or face any kind of wind. But, as Co.Design notes, people who work in kitchens or in construction and manufacturing still need to be able to leave notes and label items, despite the rough conditions. Now they can.

The company that makes Post-its, 3M, just came out with an iteration of the sticky notes made to withstand harsh conditions and rough surfaces. Post-it Extreme Notes can stick to your fridge, containers in the freezer, construction tools, wood, and on a sink. Essentially, the Post-it Extreme Notes are designed to go where regular Post-its can't.

Courtesy of Post-it Brand

The paper is coated to make it water resistant, and the adhesive is much stronger than the kind that holds the classic notes to your stack of office papers. The water-resistant coating also keeps ink from running, so if you put your sticky note out in the rain or near a spraying sink, you'll still be able to read it. (You can't stick the notes on already-wet surfaces, though—it's just that if you stick them on a dry surface, they won't fall off once they get wet.)

According to Willem Bastiaens, the 3M lab manager who Co.Design spoke to about the new notes, they're even durable enough to last through a hurricane. One of 3M's sales teams left a set of the extra-sticky notes outside a building during Hurricane Irma, and according to Bastiaens, they survived the storm still attached to the wall. The company also tested the notes on construction sites around the country during extreme weather, making sure they could stick for at least a month no matter what the season.

Even if you aren't working outside all day, you can probably still find a reason to use an extra-sticky Post-it Note, whether it's labeling Tupperware in your fridge or paint swatches on your walls. You can even use them to stick notes to your fan—if they can withstand a hurricane, they can certainly withstand a room fan. The only surface they're not designed to stick on? Paper.